Ralph Waldo Emerson(American Poet)

Date of Birth:

May 25, 1803

Date of Death:

April 27, 1882

Nationality:

American

Quote count:

1336

Times favorited:

7621

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, philosopher, poet, and leader of the Transcendentalist movement in the early 19th century. His teachings directly influenced the growing New Thought movement of the mid 1800s.

Emerson gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his 1836 essay, Nature. As a result of this ground breaking work he gave a speech entitled The American Scholar in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. considered to be America's "Intellectual Declaration of Independence". Emerson once said "Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you."